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This document describes results from the OHI 2017 global assessment.

Description of reference datasets and figures

Datasets (compiled for website)

Data are the OHI scores for the eez regions of 220 countries and territories from 2012 to 2017.

Region 0 is the global average scores, which are calculated using an area-weighted average of the region scores (status, likely future state, and score dimensions).

Figures that provide an overview of scores

This carpet plot figure (download as high resolution png) provides a full overview of the scores from the 2017 assessment. Each row represents a region, the main groupings represent goals, and within each goal there are 6 years of data. Black regions indicate no data.

Don’t try too hard to interpret the results for specific countries/goals/years!!

This plot is good for providing a quick overview of things like:

  • What is the range of scores?
  • Which goals tend to have high scores across most regions (species, habitat)
  • Which goals have a lot of variation across regions (tourism & recreation, lasting special places)
  • Which goals are volatile across years (natural products, tourism & recreation)

Another resource that can be useful for examining scores is this interactive plot. This can be used to (some example screen shots):

explore the distribution of scores

compare different goal scores

observe change over time

More figure resources

  • The location of maps describing goal and index scores can be downloaded from here
  • Flower plots for each region can be downloaded from here

Change over time

This section describes global patterns in index and goal scores over time.

Average global goal and index scores across years

(NOTE: Livelihood and economy goals are not included here)

The Global Index score for 2017 (eez area weighted average of region scores) was: 70. The following table provides the global scores (eez area weighted average of region scores) for the Index and goals/subgoals.

goal 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Index 70.61 71.07 70.95 70.57 69.83 70.10
Artisanal opportunities 76.82 77.15 77.41 77.51 77.58 77.66
Species condition (subgoal) 89.65 89.66 89.68 89.70 89.77 89.78
Biodiversity 89.92 90.23 90.06 90.22 90.36 90.33
Habitat (subgoal) 90.18 90.78 90.43 90.73 90.94 90.88
Coastal protection 87.88 87.73 87.71 87.64 87.32 86.61
Carbon storage 79.19 79.17 79.18 79.18 79.22 79.21
Clean water 74.19 73.73 73.65 73.57 73.54 73.54
Fisheries (subgoal) 52.35 52.75 52.78 51.29 50.51 50.77
Food provision 52.19 52.66 52.63 51.24 50.54 51.03
Mariculture (subgoal) 26.21 27.63 28.36 28.51 28.80 27.64
Iconic species (subgoal) 66.22 67.41 67.43 67.79 66.57 66.24
Sense of place 62.07 62.64 62.81 62.99 62.57 62.40
Lasting special places (subgoal) 57.92 57.87 58.20 58.19 58.57 58.56
Natural products 50.77 50.93 51.02 48.52 45.47 44.72
Tourism & recreation 52.55 52.25 50.71 50.24 46.46 47.48

The following is a very preliminary analysis of how the global scores changed over time. Global index scores decreased by an average 0.19 points per year (although, not significant with this rough analysis), with 138 regions having decreasing trends and 82 having increasing trends.

Declining scores

  • Natural products declined by about 1.4 points per year on average (p = 0.010, 84 regions with decreasing trend and 50 with increasing). However, there is a lot of variation trends for this goal (i.e., large standard deviation), indicating that some regions have had relatively large increases.
  • Tourism and recreation declined by about 1.2 points per year on average (p = 0.008, 133 regions with decreasing trend and 52 with increasing). However, this goal had a large amount of variation in trend results.
  • Fisheries declined by about 0.5 points per year on average, which is in contrast to the increases we observed in previous years (0.03, 118 regions with decreasing trend and 102 with increasing trend)
  • Coastal protection declined by 0.22 points per year on average (p = 0.02, 107 regions with decreasing trend and 36 with increasing). However, there is a fairly large amount of variation suggesting a few regions may be driving this trend, due to seaice loss.
  • Clean waters declined by 0.11 points per year on average (p = 0.04, 123 regions with decreasing trend and 96 with increasing)

Improving scores

  • Lasting special places scores increased by an average of 0.15 points per year (p = 0.005, 78 regions with increasing trend and 59 with decreasing)
  • Artisanal opportunities scores increased by just over 0.16 points per year (p = 0.004, 178 regions with increasing trend and 35 with decreasing)
  • Species condition scores improved by a small, but statistically signficant, 0.03 points per year (p=0.002, 125 regions with increasing trend and 94 with decreasing)
goal average_change_per_year p_value num_rgns_pos_trend num_rgns_neg_trend mean_trend sd_trend
Natural products -1.4037143 0.0096243 50 84 -2.1394878 7.4757241
Tourism & recreation -1.2340000 0.0077428 52 133 -0.8431134 2.7660006
Fisheries (subgoal) -0.4602857 0.0320092 102 118 -0.2416870 1.4448025
Food provision -0.3871429 0.0524818 101 119 -0.3178831 1.4020381
Coastal protection -0.2185714 0.0212746 36 107 -0.3950958 2.4318924
Index -0.1900000 0.0919181 82 138 -0.1968468 0.8574367
Clean water -0.1114286 0.0385244 96 123 -0.0880805 0.9736564
Iconic species (subgoal) -0.0588571 0.7600811 89 131 -0.0368130 0.4276308
Carbon storage 0.0071429 0.1304063 48 80 -0.0144884 0.0869650
Species condition (subgoal) 0.0285714 0.0024870 125 94 0.0131571 0.0758774
Sense of place 0.0462857 0.6059011 91 125 0.0584299 0.8434317
Biodiversity 0.0742857 0.0416561 115 104 -0.0051494 0.4401323
Livelihoods 0.0922857 0.1410789 73 77 -0.0766821 1.4585325
Habitat (subgoal) 0.1222857 0.0668514 87 95 -0.0237615 0.8804114
Lasting special places (subgoal) 0.1511429 0.0051920 59 78 0.1536935 1.6468462
Artisanal opportunities 0.1597143 0.0043148 178 35 0.1883403 0.3946551
Mariculture (subgoal) 0.3088571 0.1915991 51 52 0.1380183 1.5118766
Livelihoods & economies 0.5065714 0.1551418 133 45 0.3215210 1.2583251
Economies 0.9208571 0.1565627 118 21 0.7197367 1.6828471

A closer look at the regions

This section explores goal and index scores at the region level. I mostly focus on the 2016 scores.

Regional goal and index scores for 2017

This interactive table describes the index and goal scores for the regions in 2017 (and here’s a link to a color coded table, and a csv file can also be downloaded).

Distribution of scores

The median index score was 68. The highest score was 95 for Macquarie Island, and the lowest score was 42 for Ivory Coast.

The following histogram describes the distribution of overall index scores:

The regions with index scores of 80 or greater are:

country Index
Macquarie Island 94.55
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 92.40
Kerguelen Islands 90.09
Heard and McDonald Islands 90.01
Crozet Islands 88.51
Howland Island and Baker Island 87.65
Prince Edward Islands 84.18
Jarvis Island 83.85
Northern Saint-Martin 83.17
Phoenix Islands (Kiribati) 82.70
Christmas Island 82.68
Palmyra Atoll 82.28
New Caledonia 81.77
Germany 81.61
Aruba 80.65
Cocos Islands 80.46
Norfolk Island 80.36
Madeira 80.32
Antigua and Barbuda 80.03

The regions with index scores of 50 or less are:

country Index
Senegal 49.85
Republique du Congo 49.42
Guinea Bissau 48.84
Bosnia and Herzegovina 48.82
Lebanon 48.68
Eritrea 48.43
Nicaragua 47.77
Guinea 46.75
Democratic Republic of the Congo 46.27
Sierra Leone 46.03
Libya 43.50
Ivory Coast 41.79

Map of index scores

Map png files can be downloaded here.

(Maps of goal scores are described below)

Comparing assessment years

The following is a comparison of the global status scores generated for 2016 by this year’s assessment vs. last year’s assessment.

If the models and source data remains the same, these scores should be exactly the same. Differences indicate changes in methods or source data.

These changes do not reflect changes in actual system health!

Global averages

We made very few changes to goals, consequently the changes in scores for the 2016 scenario were not that large from the 2016 to 2017 assessment.

The largest changes were for NP (-4.18) and MAR (-4.39). The change in mariculture reflects changes to source data, and maybe a change to the reference point. The change for NP probably mainly reflects a correction to the code so that fish oil is included in the calculations.

Changes in SPP (-2.41), FIS (-2.67), TR (-2.41) were also observed. For SPP this reflects the newest data (used for all scenario years) and for TR the newest sustainability data is used for all scenario years (unfortunately, previous years of data are not compatible due to changes in their methods). FIS had many changes (updated saup data, 4 additional years of data, updates to RAM, gapfilling RAM data, better identification of RAM regions).

Other regiosn changed by less than 2 points.

## Warning: Column `goal` joining character vector and factor, coercing into
## character vector
goal assess2017 assess2016 change
Artisanal opportunities 73.77 73.63 0.14
Species condition (subgoal) 90.37 92.78 -2.41
Biodiversity 89.36 90.50 -1.14
Habitat (subgoal) 88.36 88.21 0.15
Coastal protection 85.29 85.29 0.00
Carbon storage 78.42 78.42 0.00
Clean water 73.45 73.45 0.00
Economies 87.65 87.65 0.00
Livelihoods & economies 82.46 82.46 0.00
Livelihoods 77.28 77.28 0.00
Fisheries (subgoal) 48.05 50.72 -2.67
Food provision 48.15 50.67 -2.52
Mariculture (subgoal) 26.49 30.88 -4.39
Iconic species (subgoal) 62.13 62.13 0.00
Sense of place 59.43 59.27 0.16
Lasting special places (subgoal) 56.73 56.41 0.32
Natural products 42.20 46.38 -4.18
Tourism & recreation 45.60 48.01 -2.41

Regional data

This color-coded table compares the 2015 index scores generated for each region/goal between this year’s and last year’s assessment.

Because these are index scores, changes reflect updates to pressure and resilience scores as well as status.

The following interactive plot provides an overview of how the 2016 scores changed between the 2016 and 2017 assessment for all goals and dimensions.

## Warning: Ignoring unknown aesthetics: text

A closer look at goals

This section takes a closer look at each goal/subgoal.

Artisanal opportunities

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
United Arab Emirates 100.00
Norway 100.00
Qatar 100.00
Kuwait 100.00
Ireland 100.00
United States 100.00
Saudi Arabia 100.00
Brunei 100.00
Singapore 100.00
Cayman Islands 99.97

Bottom 10 performers

country score
211 Sao Tome and Principe 46.52
212 Solomon Islands 45.55
213 Cameroon 45.40
214 Benin 44.70
215 Mozambique 44.09
216 Madagascar 44.08
217 Comoro Islands 44.03
218 Guinea 43.46
219 Togo 43.28
220 Liberia 43.06

Species condition

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
Saint Helena 97.93
Ascension 97.81
Northern Saint-Martin 97.70
French Guiana 97.59
Montserrat 97.56
Barbados 97.17
Aruba 97.13
Saba 97.11
Guadeloupe and Martinique 97.05
Tristan da Cunha 96.93

Bottom 10 performers

country score
211 Papua New Guinea 80.14
212 Libya 79.96
213 East Timor 79.83
214 Myanmar 79.75
215 Oecussi Ambeno 79.71
216 Singapore 78.87
217 Eritrea 78.56
218 Iraq 77.59
219 Bahrain 77.49
220 Sudan 75.48

Habitat

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
Macquarie Island 100
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 100
Kerguelen Islands 100
Heard and McDonald Islands 100
Norfolk Island 100
Pitcairn 100
Bouvet Island 100
Tuvalu 100
Croatia 100
South Korea 100

Bottom 10 performers

country score
209 Belize 62.53
210 Democratic Republic of the Congo 62.09
211 Senegal 61.78
212 Sierra Leone 61.38
213 Poland 60.16
214 Dominica 59.41
215 Iceland 57.81
216 Nigeria 55.25
217 Bosnia and Herzegovina 51.04
218 Jan Mayen 42.24

Coastal protection

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
Howland Island and Baker Island 100
Phoenix Islands (Kiribati) 100
Pitcairn 100
Wallis and Futuna 100
Tuvalu 100
Denmark 100
Sint Maarten 100
Saba 100
Line Islands (Kiribati) 100
Belgium 100

Bottom 10 performers

country score
161 Sierra Leone 31.62
162 Guinea 31.26
163 Senegal 30.48
164 Guinea Bissau 30.39
165 Nicaragua 30.20
166 Democratic Republic of the Congo 29.92
167 Sweden 26.89
168 Dominica 26.40
169 Belize 23.78
170 Lithuania 22.16

Carbon storage

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
Northern Saint-Martin 100
Germany 100
Seychelles 100
Denmark 100
Sint Maarten 100
Saba 100
Belgium 100
Russia 100
Netherlands 100
Estonia 100

Bottom 10 performers

country score
139 Liberia 34.59
140 Senegal 33.65
141 Guinea 32.88
142 Sierra Leone 32.67
143 Ivory Coast 32.50
144 Guinea Bissau 30.61
145 Democratic Republic of the Congo 29.91
146 Barbados 27.01
147 Dominica 26.64
148 Nicaragua 9.78

Clean waters

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
Heard and McDonald Islands 99.71
Falkland Islands 98.95
Bouvet Island 98.91
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 98.89
Kerguelen Islands 98.78
Jarvis Island 97.85
Macquarie Island 97.32
Phoenix Islands (Kiribati) 96.97
Howland Island and Baker Island 96.68
Crozet Islands 96.63

Bottom 10 performers

country score
211 Guatemala 33.15
212 Israel 32.82
213 Belgium 32.44
214 India 29.33
215 Benin 28.91
216 Lebanon 28.67
217 Slovenia 28.39
218 Togo 28.24
219 Monaco 24.49
220 Gibraltar 19.81

Fisheries

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
Estonia 97.90
Finland 96.45
Latvia 96.10
Nauru 93.23
Sweden 91.26
Clipperton Island 90.35
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 90.30
Solomon Islands 89.19
Poland 89.03
Palau 86.89

Bottom 10 performers

country score
211 Guadeloupe and Martinique 17.63
212 Singapore 17.17
213 Mauritania 17.07
214 British Indian Ocean Territory 16.83
215 Western Sahara 14.77
216 Barbados 14.27
217 Amsterdam Island and Saint Paul Island 13.77
218 Bouvet Island 10.72
219 Turks and Caicos Islands 10.72
220 Jan Mayen 6.08

Mariculture

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
New Zealand 100.00
Norway 100.00
Chile 100.00
Ecuador 100.00
China 100.00
Faeroe Islands 100.00
Iceland 96.67
Spain 66.33
Canada 65.88
South Korea 62.16

Bottom 10 performers

country score
116 Micronesia 0
117 Argentina 0
118 Yemen 0
119 Kenya 0
120 Uruguay 0
121 Jamaica 0
122 Nigeria 0
123 Lebanon 0
124 Eritrea 0
125 Libya 0

Iconic species

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
United Arab Emirates 100.00
Norway 100.00
Qatar 100.00
Kuwait 100.00
Ireland 100.00
United States 100.00
Saudi Arabia 100.00
Brunei 100.00
Singapore 100.00
Cayman Islands 99.97

Bottom 10 performers

country score
211 Sao Tome and Principe 46.52
212 Solomon Islands 45.55
213 Cameroon 45.40
214 Benin 44.70
215 Mozambique 44.09
216 Madagascar 44.08
217 Comoro Islands 44.03
218 Guinea 43.46
219 Togo 43.28
220 Liberia 43.06

Lasting special places

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
Macquarie Island 100
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 100
Kerguelen Islands 100
Heard and McDonald Islands 100
Crozet Islands 100
Howland Island and Baker Island 100
Prince Edward Islands 100
Jarvis Island 100
Northern Saint-Martin 100
Phoenix Islands (Kiribati) 100

Bottom 10 performers

country score
211 Jordan 0
212 Saint Helena 0
213 Togo 0
214 Bahrain 0
215 Benin 0
216 Iraq 0
217 Syria 0
218 Sudan 0
219 Eritrea 0
220 Libya 0

Natural products

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
New Caledonia 99.98
Suriname 99.69
Iran 97.47
Trinidad and Tobago 97.45
French Polynesia 96.84
Latvia 96.06
Finland 95.92
Bangladesh 95.38
South Korea 95.15
Italy 95.08

Bottom 10 performers

country score
126 Mayotte 0
127 Saudi Arabia 0
128 Brunei 0
129 Sao Tome and Principe 0
130 Cyprus 0
131 Equatorial Guinea 0
132 Algeria 0
133 Dominica 0
134 Republique du Congo 0
135 Ivory Coast 0

Tourism and recreation

Scores

Top 10 performers

country score
Northern Saint-Martin 100
Aruba 100
Antigua and Barbuda 100
Malta 100
Curacao 100
Seychelles 100
Bahamas 100
Vanuatu 100
Sint Maarten 100
Saba 100

Bottom 10 performers

country score
195 Democratic Republic of the Congo 0.41
196 Yemen 0.00
197 Israel 0.00
198 Venezuela 0.00
199 Iraq 0.00
200 Syria 0.00
201 North Korea 0.00
202 Somalia 0.00
203 Lebanon 0.00
204 Libya 0.00

Additional checks

Plot years of data for each data layer….

Generate flower plots using new function…

Comparing trend and average index scores

To obtain a more complete picture of which regions are doing well and which are doing poorly we compared the average index scores (averaged over 2012 to 2016) and the trends for each region.

Of most concern are regions that have poor scores and declining trends.

The following is an interactive plot (region names are visible when hovering over the points) showing the relationship between average index scores and trend. The horizontal line represents the 0 trend and the vertical line is the average of the average index scores.